Jun 6 2023
By:
David Henderson
a The great Adam Smith was born sometime in early June 1723. I'm not going to spend time figuring out which day because it doesn't really matter. To commemorate Smith's birthday, Reason magazine asked various people to give their favorite quotes from Smith and comment on them. I like a lot of the choices. Among m...
Jun 5 2023
By:
Scott Sumner
Robert Hetzel has written an outstanding new book entitled The Federal Reserve: A New History. I reviewed the book for Central Banking. Here's an excerpt: During 2008, the Fed overreacted to (transitory) rising energy prices, and policy became too contractionary during the early stages of the Great Recession. Just as ...
Jun 5 2023
By:
Pierre Lemieux
Hyperbole has its rhetorical or pedagogical advantages, but it must not overcome reality. I am not casting the first stone at Financial Times columnist Edward Luce, but I do want to criticize a recent column of his (“Beware Elon Musk’s Warped Libertarianism,” May 24, 2023). On what basis does Mr. Luce claim th...
Jun 4 2023
By:
John Phelan
A year ago, I wrote about twin examples offered by one of Minnesota’s Twin Cities, St. Paul, of the principles of Econ 101 in action. The Saint Paul City Council passed a minimum wage ordinance in 2018 that, from January 2020, would raise the city’s minimum wage by stages to $15 an hour for all firms by 2028. R...
Jun 3 2023
By:
Scott Sumner
Beware of "foolproof" recession indicators. For years, people have been telling me that an inversion of the 2-year and 10-year yield spread on Treasury securities indicates that a recession will occur within 12 months. I've warned them that while the indicator has a good track record, it's far from perfect. This yield...
Jun 3 2023
By:
David Henderson
Who asked Nikki Haley to run for president? Can somebody introduce us to the gentlepersons who convinced Tim Scott to enter the contest? Is anybody outside of his family and his congregation urging Mike Pence to join the Republican field? The same applies to the other long shots — Vivek Ramaswamy, Doug Burg...
Jun 3 2023
By:
Pierre Lemieux
A recent oped in the Financial Times bears a strange title: “On America’s Ramshackle Railroads, Republicans Concede the Limits of the Market.” Although this sentence does not appear in the piece itself, it does reflect its author’s opinion. Oren Cass, president of American Compass and a proponent of industrial ...
Read this Pierre Lemieux Book Review
May 1 2023
By Pierre Lemieux
A Book Review of Law, Legislation, and Liberty, by Friedrich A. Hayek. Jeremy Shearmur, editor.1 Friedrich Hayek's trilogy Law, Legislation, and Liberty, published in three separate volumes in 1973, 1976, and 1979, was recently republished in a single book under the careful editorship of Jeremy Shearmur. The l...
Jun 2 2023
By:
Kevin Corcoran
In my recent summary and review of Randall Holcombe’s book Following Their Leaders: Political Preferences and Public Policy, one of the ideas I found most interesting was Holcombe’s distinction between anchor and derivative preferences. Holcombe attempts to explain something many people have noticed before – why ...
Jun 2 2023
By:
David Henderson
Last month, the House of Representatives voted to pass H.R. 2, the "Secure the Border Act." 219 Republicans in the House of Representatives voted in favor; 211 Democrats and 2 Republicans voted against. One of its provisions, as noted by the Congressional Budget Office, is that it would "Require all U.S. empl...
Jun 1 2023
By:
Scott Sumner
Some economists worry that minimum wage laws will lead to higher unemployment. But there are many other pernicious side effects when governments intervene in the labor market. Here's one example: Targeted grazing is part of California’s strategy to reduce wildfire risk because goats can eat a wide variety of veget...
May 31 2023
By:
Kevin Corcoran
Public goods is one of many terms in economics where the term's intended meaning is not all intuitive. Most people hear it and think it means either something like “good produced by the public sector” or “something that is good for the public to have.” Thus, if an economist points out that education is not a pu...
May 31 2023
By:
David Henderson
The 30 days since publication have more than passed and so I'm posting my joint op/ed with Don Boudreaux here. ‘Air’ Is a Cautionary Tale About ESG Michael Jordan’s lesson for investors: Avoid uncertainty. By Donald J. Boudreaux and David R. Henderson April 13, 2023 at 6:34 pm ET Some movies not only ...
May 30 2023
By:
Scott Sumner
Over at Bloomberg, Clive Crook suggests that monetary policy does not deserve all of the blame for the inflation overshoot: The Fed’s fragile independence precludes it from challenging Congress and the administration over appropriate fiscal policy. For the same reason, it can’t be seen as directly countermanding...
May 30 2023
By:
Pierre Lemieux
There are loose ways of speaking, which are literally incorrect, and precise ways of speaking, meant to convey exact information. As an example of loose speaking, I read in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (“Why You’re Losing More to Casinos on the Las Vegas Strip,” May 29, 2023): In addition to smaller winning...
May 30 2023
By:
David Henderson
The second general class or type of opinions to which I have referred is distinguished, not by a special emphasis upon some particular view of the nature and purposes of the aggressive activities of states, but by a very definite thesis with respect to the wisdom and the consequences of such activities. If wa...